University Launches Free Mobile App: Palm PBA

Palm Beach Atlantic University takes another step in its commitment to remaining on the leading edge of higher education technology with the launch of the University’s free mobile app: Palm PBA

"The app was designed with the PBA student in mind and to augment our general internal communications capabilities," said Vicki Pugh, University vice president for Development. "However, we hope PBA parents, alumni, prospective students, donors and all those with an interest in PBA will find it useful and convenient."

Palm PBA currently is available for smart phones and tablets runningAndroid 4.3+,iOS 6 and 7* and Blackberry (BB 5+) or more recent.

"I think we all can agree that the communications landscape is becoming increasingly dispersed," said PBA’s Director of Technology Support and Media Services Jason Thomas, who was the project manager. "Palm PBA puts the University in a position to communicate with students, faculty, alumni and others where they live – on their mobile devices."

Palm PBA is launching with 23 “applets” that perform a variety of functions including:

EVENTS – featuring a near “universal calendar” that will keep users up to date on ALL that is going on at PBA, but also is broken down into categories so that areas of interest easily can be tracked

"Early on we met with a cross section of campus thought leaders to determine which applets we should include in the first-tier build," said Louis Park, PBA’s web content manager. "Now that we’re launched, we’ll be studying usage data to see which applets are popular and which are not.

"Over time, some of the applets will be removed, upgraded or replaced to make sure that Palm PBA always gives the best possible user experience," said Park, noting that users can customize their experience through the "settings" feature.

To create Palm PBA, the University’s Campus Information Services (CIS) and University Relations and Marketing departments partnered with DubLabs of Washington, D.C. DubLabs has partnered in building apps for more than 70 colleges and universities.

[*To determine which iOS version you are running, on your device, go to Settings, then General, then About and look for Version; for Androids, go to Settings, About Device and look for Android Version.]